Hartwin Peelaers

Dr. Peelaers is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Kansas (KU). In 2009, he received his Ph.D. degree in Physics from the University of Antwerp, Belgium, where he used first-principles calculations to study the properties of nanowires. He was the recipient of a Fellowship from the Belgian American Education Foundation to start postdoctoral studies in the group of Prof. Chris Van de Walle in the Materials Department of the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). Dr. Peelaers has studied a wide range of materials, from nanowires and 2D materials to transparent conducting oxides using advanced first-principles techniques. In 2015 he became Associate Specialist, also at UCSB, where he continued his research on wide-band-gap oxides, such as Ga2O3. In 2018 he joined the faculty at KU, where he uses first-principles methods, based on density functional theory (DFT) to improve our understanding of the physics of wide-bandgap oxides, battery cathode materials, and charge transfer and separation in organic photovoltaics. In 2024 he received an NSF CAREER award to investigate vanadium oxides as cathode material for non-Li ion batteries.